I'd just like to take the time to remind everyone here.
None of you, including the person releasing this chapter, have any moral high ground to stand on. Pirating & translating a series while making money is no more evil an act than pirating & translating a series while not making money. You're both breaking the exact same copyright laws. Making a bit of additional money on the side for your time spent is irrelevant.
Also to say scanlation costs virtually no money as a blanket statement is patently false. The translators, for their time & skills, often do end up charging for their services. Particularly if it's a series they know nothing about & don't care about. The amount they ask for per chapter could be relatively low, or it could up as high as about $15.
There was a time when Meraki with all donations combined were bringing in about $2,000 and spending
more than that in order to keep up their release rate. Is that "scamming"? Is that anymore "immoral" than what we're
all already doing (piracy)?
I don't think so, and I think if you sit back and really think about it you probably wouldn't either.
Scanlation isn't just a couple of bros doing a series they love. If it were there's a whole host of series that would still be sitting around dead and unscanlated.
Hell. Exhibit A: there's still a whole host of series sitting around dead and unscanlated. And here's the "scanlator just doing what he loves for free" not picking those up, but instead picking up an already popular series that's being done at, granted, a bit of a slower pace. I'm not knocking him for doing it, hell I don't even dislike him "sniping". I think it's hilarious. But you can see how people will go for things that are already well known to them and popular, rather than searching for things they've never even heard of and scanlating them.
@lashauk
Don't lie. Hati is a lot of things, but Dru isn't one of them. He's not holding series hostage and demanding X amount of donations or they won't be done.
Hati's a slow scanlator, but that's because of poor leadership & often unmotivated staff. Not because he's holding things hostage.